Abstract In this article the writer studies the theme of regional and ethnicidentities that are found in Canadian short stories. The writer examines three different stories for this study. The first story discussed in this regard is 'Death by Landscape' by Margaret Atwood. The second story is 'The Loons' by Margaret Laurence and finally, the writer looks at the story 'The Boat' by Alister MacLeod.
From the Paper "Identity is a common theme in many forms of literature. However in Canadian short stories the idea of the multiple identities is an important theme. In many cases characters show different regional and ethnic identities in the same story. The short stories that will be used to prove this point are "Death by Landscape" by Margaret Atwood, "The Loons" by Margaret Laurence and "The Boat" by Alistair MacLeod". Each of these stories takes place in a different region of Canada and each of these regions has a unique ethnic composition."
A review of Colin Kidd's book, "British Identities: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World,1600-1800", about the rise of nationalist and ethnicidentities.
Abstract This paper reviews Colin Kidd's book about the pre-modern roots of nationalism and the formation of national and ethnicidentities. The paper explains that Kidd's book, "British Identities: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800", examines the central question about the place of ethnicity in the discourses of the era preceding the rise of nationalist identities.
A look at the issues of gender and ethnicidentity in Asian American film and literature through the review of the films " Double Happiness" and "The Wedding Banquet" and Maxine Hong Kingston's novel " The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghost
2,900 words (approx. 11.6 pages), 8 sources, 2002, $ 106.95
Abstract This essay looks at the issues of gender and ethnicidentity in two films and one novel, Double Happiness, The Wedding Banquet, and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. These works provide the framework from which a reconsideration of ethnic and gender identity can take place. In these works, this reconsideration of identity centers on balancing old structures of identity with new experience and searching for a potential empowerment and confluence in the balancing the formation of a new identity.
Abstract This paper is an outline of gender/ethnicidentity. In this essay, I will explore gender and ethnicidentity in two films and one novel, "Double Happiness", "The Wedding Banquet", and Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts".
Abstract The paper explores gender and ethnicity-based inequalities among American workers. The paper provides definitions of ethnicidentity and discrimination and presents a concrete example of discrimination towards a Hispanic male. The paper also offers a short discussion of the book "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich.
From the Paper "People perceive their membership differently in different groups. In social psychology, social identity theory states that individuals have a need to belong to groups, a fact that brings about an enhancement in their self-esteem. The meanings people attach to their belonging to groups such as racial, ethnic, or gender are integrated into the social identity theory that also shapes individual identity (Brunett and Farr-Wharton 2002; Haslam 2002, cited by Chow, Hau Siu & Crawford, 2004). Social interactions are also shaped by these meanings as shared experience and mutual support are framed by social identity. This applies especially for in-group members - the group to which an individual belongs to, while the group which excludes an individual is considered an out-group."
Abstract An examination of the relationship between ethnicity and identity as understood as basis structures of individual life-worlds. The essay is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to sketching conceptual fieldwork, while the second part deals with the analysis of collected data. Therefore, in the first part, the writer explains the concepts ?identity?, and ?ethnicity? and indicates possible ramifications the particular usage of concepts implies. In the second part, identity is discussed as a variable that influences ethnic ideologies one adheres to. In this part he also shows how the level which a particular ethnic group occupies at the stratification level, influences the shape of one's identity. In conclusion, the writer summarizes the findings by suggesting that identity and ethnicity mutually influence each other and they are both complementary expressions of each other.
From the Paper "In the following essay, I am going to locate the focal point of this problem in the one particular community - Highland Park High School. Highland Park is a small town in New Jersey, Middlesex County, where many emigrants from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America are there. At the Highland Park High School, although not apparently seen, the question of identity and ethnic belonging is still a problem among the American youths. While staying a year at Highland Park, I have been thinking a lot about the problems characteristic for the multicultural societies. All the questions I have asked myself may be boiled down to one single question ? namely, whether ethnicity and identity should be treated as interdependent variables, or rather one of them is more fundamental?"
Abstract This paper answers two questions on racial and ethnic relations. Firstly, whether assimilation is realistic or desirable for immigrant groups who have arrived since 1965. Secondly the rank and order of race, ethnicity, nativity, class are analyzed in terms of their relative importance in shaping one's life chances, in relation to American society.
From the Paper "This is a truth that should certainly have been learned in a society like that of the United States, where everyone but the Indians came from somewhere else and had to become accepted in the society that was being built (only the Indians were already here, and even they migrated at some point in the past across the Bering Strait). Yet, American society has continued to treat each new group that has arrived as interlopers. Discrimination has been used against nearly every new group--the Irish, the Jewish, Catholics, Hispanics, and blacks, among others. Group after group has managed to become ..."
Abstract This paper considers a variety of approaches to the study of ethnicity. In particular, it looks at the formalist approaches of Barth and the recent phenomenological drive towards self-conscious situational categorisation. It discusses how anthropological discussions of ethnicity in the first half of the 20th century were dominated by a conception of ethnicity as a culturally coherent bounded unit. It attempts to show that while this certainly established ethnic categories, it impeded the study of how such ethnic categories and ethnicidentities are formed. It examines the usefulness of such analytic approaches to anthropology by emphasizing how the cultural differences within these units can be critical in the processes of identity formation.
From the Paper "Barth's (1969) radical change in approach was to emphasize what is socially effective. By doing so, he makes us see ethnic groups as a form of social organisation, and point four in the definition given above becomes most critical . In his approach, the features that he emphasises are only those that the actor marks out as distinctive. For him "ethnic categories provide an organisational vessel that may be given varying amounts and forms of content in different socio-economic areas" (Barth: 1969: 15). In many sense, Barth anticipates the post-modernist unease at the application of "our" labels to "them", Barth emphasised that ethnic identity was a matter of self-ascription and ascription by others, not ascription by the analyst."
Abstract The paper compares and contrasts Stuart Hall's essays "The Global and the Local: Globalization and Ethnicity" and "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities" with Thomas Erikson's "How can the Global be Local? Islam, the West and the Globalization of Identity Politics". The paper argues that while all three essays are written from a left-liberal perspective, the critical difference between the two writers and their theoretical models lies in how radically the challenge of Islam to postmodernity has transformed our understanding of ethnicidentity in a globalized context.
From the Paper "In "The Global and the Local" and "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities" Stuart Hall argues strongly that the local identities that defined societies up to the 1990s were collapsing under the pressures of globalization and the pre-eminence of multiculturalism. Hall contends that the culture movements of the late 1990s were dominated by the cultural hybridity among the increasingly multicultural populations of the globalized world (Hall "Local and Global" 38-39). In "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities," Hall expands upon this concept in arguing that what he terms the "great collective social identities" may continue to exist but no longer define who we are - give us the "code of identity" in Hall's words - in the modern world (Hall "Old and New Identities" 45)."
This paper presents a review and comparison of three novels, focusing on the themes of ethnicity and American identity: Cahan's "Yekl", Yezierska's "The Bread Givers" and Morrison's "The Bluest Eye"
900 words (approx. 3.6 pages), 4 sources, 2002, $ 31.95
Abstract The paper explores the theme of racialidentity in these three novels. The similarities in plot are highlighted For example; each novel's plot is centered on a character's attempt to transcend their racial otherness in order to be accepted by American society. The paper concludes with a discussion on Randolph Bourne's essay "Trans-national America", relating it to Morrison's desire to avoid racial hierarchy, and showing how the protagonists of the novels do not fit into this multi-cultural scheme.
From the Paper "The crisis at the center of Abraham Cahan's story is presented as a conflict between Jake's ethnic past, his racial otherness in America and his ambition to be, in his words, "a Yankee". Early on in the story, Yekl, in his ambition to be an American, changes his name to Jake, because the name Yekl is associated with a Russian past he is not able to "reconcile with the actualities of his American present". Essentially, one cannot be a Russian Jew and an American, to be an American one needs to repudiate their ethnic past. This crisis gets even further developed when Jake's wife arrives from Russia.
To Jake, his wife is an embodiment of the ethnic identity he wishes to efface. When he first sees her off the boat ?his heart had sunk at the sight of his wife's uncouth and un-American appearance.? For her part, she looks at Jake in his American garb and sees barely a semblance of the man she married. For Cahan, the process of assimilation and Americanization is a process that destroys one's ethnic identity, and the foil of Jake and Gitl illustrates a sort of before and after picture meant to demonstrate that."
Abstract This essay critically analyzes what it means to be an American. The author attempts to investigate how the way in which we define ourselves within our racial or ethnic categories affects our identities as Americans.
From the Paper "One's identity and self esteem is constantly being molded by a number of ongoing factors. Culture a factor of many. A persons cultural upbringing predetermines how that specific person will live his or her life. It also determines how that person will respect other cultures, as well as his own. A complex nation is America, and the opinions of Americans can vary greatly. Mary C. Waters relays the concept of ?ethnic options,? which is a term which means the freedom to choose your ethnicity, based on the specific situation. Waters strongly believes that Americans with European ancestry are at a significantly greater advantage over non-Whites in America. Therefore, according to Waters, the ways in which we define ourselves within our racial and ethnic categories, can compliment or vanish our identities as Americans."
Abstract This paper gives explores the issue of transracial adoption in America. It outlines the cultural and family aspects of adoption and more specifically transracial adoption. It points to individual and broad surveys that conclude there are high success rates in both family continuity and preservation of racial/ethnicidentity.
From the paper:
"Transracial adoption means adopting children of various races, color, religion, that is, from all parts of the world. Transracial adoption has been spoken for and spoken against and my argument is based on ?choosing a positive view point, that is pro transracial.?
"Here we will discuss that transracial adoption proves to be very beneficial for the adoptee and they do not face any racial discrimination problem, nor do they lack self-esteem."
Abstract This paper discusses Cope's study on attempts at racism in colonial Mexico and the reasons why racism never truly flourished. The paper concludes by agreeing with Cope's study and the light it sheds on racism and class and self-identity.
From the Paper "The failure of Spanish elites to impose their own definitions of race on the people of the traza shows the difficulty of imposing one's cultural ideas and definitions on another society. In the case of colonial Mexico, for example, the Spanish clearly wanted to establish a social order based on race. To them, a person's social mobility hinges on how much Spanish blood they possess."
Abstract This paper examines the ethnic and racial themes in three films: "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Raisin in the Sun" and "Year of the Dragon". The author summarizes each film. The paper reviews the emotions of some of the characters in relationship to the ethnic and racial themes in each the movies.
From the Paper ""To Kill a Mockingbird" is set in a small Southern town in the ... . An idealistic white lawyer, Gregory Peck, defends a black man, Brock Peters, who is falsely accused of raping an ignorant white woman. Although the lawyer proves his client is not guilty the all-white jury ..."
Abstract Canada's large metropolitan areas, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, are increasingly defined by the ethnic and racial heterogeneity of their populations. As a result of increased immigration in the post-World War II period, the number of peoples with backgrounds other than English and French has swelled the population of the country. In many respects the experience of Canadian cities in this regard mirrors that of North American cities in general. It is in this context that this essay examines the phenomenon of ethnic and racial segregation in Canadian cities.
